Yesterday we reviewed some of Aldi’s Christmas decorations for 2015. Today, we’re looking at UK homeware store Dunelm.
With stores across the UK, Dunelm are fast emerging as one of the premier home furnishing stores around. Therefore, it is only right that we take a look and see what they have to offer.
When you first walk in to any of their stores, it’s likely you won’t wonder too far from the entrance before you find the Christmas offerings beginning to emerge.
Like many shops, we found an extensive range of silver and white decorations, a look that seems to be very much in vogue for this 2015. There are plenty of other colours too, the traditional red, gold and green are also prominent.
There’s everything from Christmas crackers and Christmas trees, to festive draught excluders and candles on offer, but we thought we’d look for some items that were a little bit different. Here is what we chose.
Baubles storage boxes
You know the score. Every Christmas you will buy new baubles for the Christmas tree, only to stuff them back inside the same flimsy plastic packaging or ripped tissue paper when it’s time to store them away until next year.
Well Dunelm have some great solutions for that, namely in the form of several different-sized storage boxes. They are made from a very tough cardboard and there is a choice of different festive designs.
We thought we’d go large! We purchased the biggest size available which is priced at £9.99 and offers a double layer of storage inside for up to 40 baubles.
There are pre-made partitions inside the box that fit a standard kind of bauble size, but they can be removed if you want to just stack the box full of goodies yourself. We think they could potentially make lovely hamper boxes or gift boxes too!
A red and white Nordic design was what we opted for, you can see the photos on this page.
Summary: Overall, we were very impressed. A decent price which offers good value as the box seems very strong and so should last a good few years.
Charger plates
Okay, we admit this choice is a bit left-field. We saw some great Christmas crockery sets in Matalan, but baulked at paying £6 for silver placemats to go underneath. We will review those Matalan bits shortly.
So, we have been keeping an eye out for charger plates or placemats that could replace the pricey Matalan solution. We’re going to put together our best Christmas table theme by mixing and matching products from a range of retailers.
While browsing the Dunelm range, we found these very tough silver charger plates. They are a glittery design, so will add sparkle to any Christmas table. They also represent amazing value for money at just 99p each.
Summary: Considering other festive or silver placemats and charger plates seem to be in the £5/£6 each price range, at 99p these are exceptional value and really good quality. We purchased eight, and within minutes of carrying them around store we were pleasantly surprised by the heavy feel to them. They’re plenty big enough to show up under large dinner plates, and so will compliment many a table.
They are also available in a brushed silver, as well as a red colour.